1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to virus detection systems, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for detecting viruses in mobile phones type devices in which virus detection software is executed externally.
2. Related Art
Virus detection software refers to program(s) which scan (examine) data on a target device for existence of any viruses on the target device. A virus generally refers to a software code/data which gets installed on target devices (often without the knowledge of the user of the target device) and is often in the form of (part of a) a file present on the non-volatile memory. The file can be executable (in which case processing resources can be wasted or features otherwise available on the target device may be impacted) or mere data wasting storage resources on the target device.
There are several scenarios in which virus detection software is executed external to the target device being scanned. For example, virus detection software is often executed on a computer system to scan mobile phone type devices such as mobile phones, PDAs etc., (example target devices), often since such types of devices have insufficient resources (storage and/or processing capacity) to execute virus detection software.
Such target devices are increasingly vulnerable to virus attacks. For example, mobile phones are increasingly being provided with features such as ability to access electronic mail and world-wide web, multi-media messaging services (MMS), games, short message services (SMS), desktop applications, etc. Due to such connectivity applications, mobile phones (or mobile devices, in general) are increasingly more vulnerable to virus attacks. Furthermore the virus can spread from one mobile phone to another, thereby infecting additional mobile phones. Accordingly, it is generally desirable to at least detect the presence of the viruses on mobile phones.
According to one prior approach, detection of viruses in a mobile device is performed by connecting the mobile device to a computer (having relatively larger memory and processing power) and running a virus scan software in the computer. In one embodiment, different virus scanning software programs are implemented for corresponding operating environments (e.g., operating system or model of the mobile phone) on the computer. Such a fragmented approach leads to several inefficiencies such as increased cost of development, potentially not detecting files of viruses which are designed for other operating environments, etc.